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Effects of Diabetes

Diabetes is derived from the Greek work diabainein meaning "passing through" or "siphon," referring to a major symptom of the disorder—excessive urine production. Diabetes has been noted since ancient times and treatments have been available since the Middle Ages. In 1675, Thomas Willis added mellitus, the Latin word for honey, to the tail-end of diabetes to account for the urine’s sweetness.

Some 200 years later in the early nineteen hundreds, Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer realized people with diabetes were lacking a single chemical that was normally produced by the pancreas. Schafer referred to it as insulin after the Latin word insula meaning island, based on the Islets of Langerhans where insulin is produced. Insulin is a hormone essential to the conversion of sugar, starches and other foods into natural energy and the regulation of glucose uptake into most blood cells. The carbohydrate to monosaccharide glucose process takes place within a few hours with the aid of insulin in healthy individuals. The Islets of Langerhans are groups of endocrine cells in the pancreas, which account for approximately one to two percent of the pancreas’s mass. Another milestone for diabetes occurred in 1922, at which time a patient was treated for the first time with medical insulin. In 1936, Sir Harold Percival Himsworth revealed the distinction between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

WHO estimated in 2006 that at least 171 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes; that number is expected to double by 2030. Currently, 18.3 percent of Americans over the age of 60 have been diagnosed with diabetes, costing the United States $132 billion each year. In North America and Europe, between five and ten percent of diabetes cases are type 1 diabetes; the remaining diabetes cases are classified as type 2 diabetes. Additionally, some 41 million people are diagnosed as having pre-diabetes—abnormally high blood sugar, yet not high enough to warrant a full-fledged diabetes diagnosis. Those considered to suffer from pre-diabetes will most likely develop diabetes within ten years unless they take preventative measures and make lifestyle changes.

Although diabetes can affect any one at any age, there are a number of ethnic groups with a higher-than-average risk: Latinos, Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, South Asians and Pacific Islanders.